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missj's review
funny
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
nationofkim's review
5.0
this was the perfect read through the holidays. the dave eggers book was my favorite of course...
gjmaupin's review
4.0
Really enjoyed these, though each had its own tone. I'm usually not on flash fiction - I tend to like immersion - but I really enjoyed these three voices.
Damn birds.
Damn birds.
dogtrax's review
4.0
This was one of my first forays into short fiction (quick fiction, flash fiction, etc) and while the collections here are a bit uneven, they are also very interesting. You need to get into a rhythm of the flow of the stories for maximum pleasure, I think.
jackwwang's review
3.0
Eggers is full of surrealist one paged gems with a killer sense of humor, Manguso gets into her childhood, also surreal in some ways but tenderly autobiographical, Olin Unferth goes off the eep end, more like a fever dream chunked out into micro stories.
melanierichards's review
4.0
This is the book that made me fall in love with Dave Eggers; trying now to tear through everything else he's written/produced/etc. I was also quite taken with Deb Olin Unferth's rough style; I'd never even heard of her previously, but read through her contribution ravenously. Sarah Manguso, I have to say, is who places my rating at 4 rather 5 stars. Her micro-fiction felt too autobiographical to me—I could see the room where she was writing, could feel her trying to write her way out of boredom...meh. Underwhelmed, I suppose you could say.
donfoolery's review
4.0
I've been sort of skipping around between the three books, but: so far, so good!
analyticali's review
4.0
I started the collection over a year ago. Maybe I started in the wrong place, because last night I read all of "Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape" by Sarah Manguso and I loved it. "How the Water Feels to the Fishes" by Dave Eggers is a mixed bag. "Minor Robberies" by Deb Olin Unferth is subtly funny but often a bit depressing. If I could rate them seperately, they'd get a 5, 4, 3 star rating respectively.
As Stacey once observed, the packaging is phenomenal.
As Stacey once observed, the packaging is phenomenal.
joshhornbeck's review
5.0
"One Hundred and Forty-Five Stories in a Small Box" is a fantastic, three-volume collection of short-short stories. Deb Olin Unferth's "Minor Robberies" is a collection of prose poems that perfectly capture the ways we tell stories to each other - full of repetition, uncertainty, and half-remembered incidents. "How the Water Feels to the Fishes," by Dave Eggers, is the most narratively traditional of the three volumes, and contains some of the funniest and most heartbreaking short stories I've read. Finally, Sarah Manguso's "Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape" is comprised of 81 little narratives that add up to tell the story of a broken young woman, desperate for connection.